Sharpe designs expanded role for the Federal Acquisition Service

Jason Miller, executive editor, Federal News Radio

Five months in as the Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner, Tom Sharpe has a
pretty good idea of how he'd like to transform FAS.

Sharpe is advocating for the General Services Administration's FAS to be the main
source of contracting for every agency for everything from technology to
automobiles to janitorial services.

Sharpe said he believes the business case for FAS to take over a lot of
contracting for the government is strong because GSA can offer better value and
better quality and can contract less expensively.

"First and foremost, it's a faster process. We've gone ahead and done some
research that using the Federal Supply Schedules, when you are going to do a
sourcing and pricing event in any event, it's up to 50 percent faster," Sharpe
said Tuesday at an event sponsored by AFFIRM in Washington. "How do I know that?
We've collected the CFO Act agencies' own internally advertised procurement lead
times. So, the actual lead times they've published internally to their customers'
document that it's up to 50 percent faster if you are doing a sourcing and pricing
event. In any case, it's a faster process."

Sharpe said on top of GSA's own speed, agencies should consider acquisition
assistance during these times of employee furloughs and budget reductions.

Because FAS is a fee-for-service agency, employees are not facing furloughs.

Stretch goal for FAS

Sharpe's goal is for FAS to earn 17 percent of all addressable spend
governmentwide by the end of 2013. Currently, FAS is getting about 12.3 percent
and is on track to reach 15 percent by Sept. 30.

Sharpe said he would like to see FAS' share of all addressable spend increase to
about 66 percent in the coming years.

The addressable spend for FAS means only the spending on the products or services
GSA offers through its schedules or multiple award contracts, but not procurements
that are agency specific, such as missiles or tanks.

One way Sharpe said GSA could increase its market share is by agencies reducing
the number of procurement shops across government. He said it costs agencies time
and money that, for the most part, they don't need to spend, as FAS already is set
up to handle these functions.

He said the Office of Management and Budget needs to help reduce the duplication
of contracting across the government.

"A suggestion would be, we take on an initiative, a metric, to reduce the number
of contract actions and drive those actions to the types of vehicles we already
can document, save time, save money and have the right level of small business
participation," he said. "An example being Office Supplies 2."

Mixed reaction from industry

Agencies are increasing their use of the OS2 blanket purchase agreement under the
Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative. Sharpe said departments are spending about
32 percent of all dollars on office supplies through the FSSI contract.

Sharpe's push for GSA FAS to be a central supplier for
commodity goods and services received mixed reaction from industry.

Steve Charles, the executive vice president of the Immix Group, which acts as a
value added reseller for many companies with GSA schedules, said his goal of
getting a larger piece of the procurement pie is lofty.

"Getting agencies to have someone else do their procurements is an unnatural act
because that's not how they get their money, and procurement is only the last step
in the process," he said. "What I would like to hear is more conversations between
the appropriation community on the hill and the procurement community. All of this
resides within OMB, but until we start meshing the constraints of fiscal law with
the realities of procurement law, and how program managers get authority to spend
and how that spend gets executed, until we really talk about that, I'm not sure we
are going to have rapid increases in market share from a central buyer."

Charles added that Sharpe's claim about GSA being up to 50 percent faster looks at
only schedules versus open market buys. His experience, however, shows GSA also is
faster in some regards than other multiple award contracts.

Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Partners, said Sharpe's priorities seem to
be expanding to focus on contract duplication, along with strategic sourcing.

One way Sharpe will increase market share is by selling the benefits of
contracting with GSA. He is meeting with the deputy secretaries of the 23 largest
agencies to explain why they should use GSA for contracting.